Thoughtful adventures in the operating system

Purge memory trick

Linux does a good job when it comes to memory allocation. If memory isn’t being used or hasn’t been used for awhile it gets put into a cache where it can readily pulled. At times though this cache can become pretty big (especially for a program that has a memory leak). If a good number of programs are being used or if memory is limited then Linux will begin using hard disk swap which can really bog down performance. In these instances, it may help to purge the memory.

In the terminal type free -m to see memory usage. Flushing the filesystem buffers and to drop extra caches can be done by doing:

sudo sync
sudo echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Look once more at free -m and memory usage should be improved. Freeing memory is most effective by shutting down whatever programs can be. To be really effective shutdown X server first.

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Here is a gathering place to share common bits of Linux knowledge. Learning with the operating system is a hobby for me. I enjoy getting along with people and being part of something everyone can contribute to. Comments, tips all liked.

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